


The Notebook(s)

by mcmaynaiz



Category: The Young Ones (TV 1982)
Genre: Curses, Diary/Journal, Idiots in Love, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-07 05:54:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26468269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcmaynaiz/pseuds/mcmaynaiz
Summary: Rick buys two notebooks from an odd little shop, planning to use them to write his beautiful poetry in. Vyvyan steals one purely because he can. Little do they know; the books are connected. Whatever they write in theirs appears in the others. Chaos ensues.
Relationships: Vyvyan Basterd/Rick (Young Ones)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 16





	The Notebook(s)

Rick strode through the crowds, bouncing on the balls of his feet with each step. This, paired with the rather manic expression on his face, had the unfortunate effect of making him look as though he rather needed the toilet. He was oblivious to this, of course. In his mind, he was a man on a mission, and nothing could stop him. 

After the incident with the bank robbery and the subsequent bus crash, they had been lucky to survive. It was odd, and none of the medical professionals they had seen had been able to explain it, but the explosion hadn’t even left a scratch on a single one of them. They had simply crawled out of the carnage, shaken, but alive. It was weirdly cartoonish, as though they just couldn’t die. Of course, afterwards they had all been terrified (not that they would have admitted it) of being prosecuted for the bank job and sent to prison forever. Sure, it would have been more anarchic than anything Rick had ever done, but the prospect of being locked in a little grey cell alongside some rather more hardened criminals had been alarming to say the least. Even Vyvyan had been uneasy about the possibility. You weren’t allowed hamsters in prison, after all. 

Thankfully, Mike’s blackmail material on the dean had finally been put to more use than simply helping Mike pass his course without ever attending his lectures. He had been reluctant to put in a good word for them at first, but after Mike had a few quiet words with him (and after Vyvyan had threatened him with a tomahawk) he had suddenly decided that these poor young boys were not to blame, they were simply products of their circumstances. He then had managed to contact several of his rather important friends, one of whom had happened to be a judge at the City of London Magistrate’s Court. Miraculously, the entire case against them was suddenly dropped, and they were free to continue living as they pleased. 

The celebration that followed this news had been raucous to say the least. They had thrown another party, however his time many, many, MANY more people had shown up. Some of them girls. Mike had swaggered up the stairs to his bedroom midway through the party with two pretty, scantily clad women on his arms, the pair of them tittering at his every word. Nobody saw him again until the next morning. Neil’s friend Stonehenge had come along, and he had gone bright red when she presented him with a series of crystals that she claimed had aphrodisiacal properties, and had then promptly dragged him out to the garden. Vyvyan, well, Vyvyan had had his pick of the girls all night. There had been a sort of rotational scheme wherein one girl would go up to Vyvyan, try her luck, and then when she had conceded defeat, another would take her place. He seemingly had just not been interested in any of them, for no apparent reason. Yes, he talked back to them with his signature enthusiasm, and he’d shown them his cut - off finger trick, but whenever any of them had tried to initiate anything more, he had refused to play along. It was as though he was acting deliberately oblivious. 

Rick hadn’t understood it at all. Lord knows, if anyone at all at that party had come onto HIM, he would have been all over them like a rash! But they hadn’t. Not even the newfound status of a criminal desperado would get anyone to look his way. He had started out the night with some misplaced confidence that ended with him being humiliated in front of everyone - including Doctor Morrison - as nobody he approached would even speak to him. Rick had spent the night sitting alone on the bottom step of the stairs periodically swigging from a warm can of lager and scowling as he stewed about how nobody liked him. It had been a very illuminating night, at least. 

So illuminating, in fact, that he had felt rather enlightened when he woke up the next day, sprawled across the stairs and covered in the contents of his half full lager can. He felt miserable, disenfranchised, and angry, but all the more self important for it. Rick knew the kids needed someone to put this feeling into words - and who better than the People’s Poet to do it?

So off he went, out into town to obtain a new notebook worthy of what he was sure was going to be some perfectly historical prose. Yes, this was going to redefine poetry as a concept! He was going to tear apart the foundations of language, and build it back up into a structure far superior to the writing of old. That would show them!

Rick turned the corner and was about to continue down the high street down to Woolworths, where he usually bought his stationary, when he caught sight of a little ramshackle odds and ends shop to his right. He frowned. Surely that wasn’t there the last time he came down this street? He supposed it must be new. But what caught his eye was a set of two rather ordinary looking black notebooks in the window. He squinted and edged closer to the window, trying to make out the price. 25p for both, the tag said. A rather good deal, considering he only had 50p in his pocket and the ones at Woolworths were 75p each. He had been intending to smuggle one out under his coat, a small feat for him, considering his criminal background (although he secretly dreaded being caught). Rick shrugged, and went in. 

He grabbed them on the way in and made a beeline for the till, slapping them down on the counter in front of the woman he supposed owned the shop. She was rather old, with grey frizzy hair flying everywhere and tiny little spectacles attached to a chain around her neck. An enormous patchwork cardigan swallowed her slight frame, and her hands, covered in large ornate rings, shook as she went to scan the notebooks.

“Well hurry up! I haven’t got all day!” Rick barked impatiently. She said nothing, merely peered up at him with a wry expression, and carried on with her task. In fact, Rick was sure she was deliberately doing it slower!

“I’m sewious! Some of us have poems to write! We can’t all lie around all day sat on our bottoms pretending to work!” That would get her, he was sure. 

Slowly and shakily, she rose to her feet, clutching the notebooks to her chest. She began to walk towards the door at the back of the room.

“OI! Where do you think you’re going! I’m a paying customer! Don’t you know how to run a business you old HAG?”

The woman turned back around and raised an eyebrow at him, gesturing towards the door, which now that he thought about it looked rather like a stock cupboard. She didn’t speak, but her body language spoke volumes. 

Rick let out a humph, and barely resisted stamping his foot. He crossed his arms and leaned back on his right leg, sticking his hips forward. “Fine! But I’d better not get any faulty pwoducts! You can’t fob me off so easily!” 

By the time he had finished complaining the woman had disappeared into the stock cupboard. He unfolded his arms and stood up straight, taking his first proper look at the shop.

It was chaotic, that was certain. Each and every available surface was covered in things, whether they were Victorian Reproduction dolls, dog - eared books, packs of paper cups, or bags of birdseed. There was seemingly no organisational system, and seemingly no cleaner. Every movement you made resulted in a large cloud of dust bursting through the air. It was dark, the windows being so full of knick knacks that only a few weak rays of light managed to make their way in. Despite the poor visibility, many ornamental lamps hung from the ceiling, but remained useless as they weren’t switched on. Rick wondered how she could possibly work in a place like this. He hoped she could read the price tag properly.

He was disrupted from his musings by the woman shuffling back into the room, holding out the notebooks to him with what he interpreted as a polite smile. Scoffing, he reached for his pockets for the 25p he owed, but was stopped as she laid her hands on his before he could. He jumped, startled, ready to shout, but before he could she spoke in a hoarse, throaty voice.

“No payment vill be necessary”, she reassured him with what sounded like a Russian accent. “First time customer discount.”

“Oh”, he muttered, rather dumbfounded and embarrassed at his earlier behaviour. “Er, thanks.”

She handed the notebooks to him, wandered back off to her desk, and sat down. Rick remained in the same position, looking at her with an odd expression on his face, and she raised an eyebrow at him. Clearly he was dismissed. 

So out he went, back to Codrington Road. He bought himself an ice lolly on the way back with the 50p he hadn’t needed to spend, and took his time walking home, lost in thought over his odd experience. Surely he could turn it into a poem, perhaps one about the perils of strange old ladies, or the evils of capitalism? The possibilities really were endless.

As he pondered he reached the share house and walked in. His train of thought was very rudely derailed by the net he found himself caught in, swinging to and fro from the ceiling. Of course Vyvyan had laid out a hunting trap for him to walk right into.

“Let me DOWN, you UTTER FASCIST! Really Vyvyan, have you nothing better to do?! Out I go to buy a notebook so I can write down my poems and inspire social change in the hearts of the kids, and all the while you’re lazing about the house with nothing better to do than think up ways to torment me? Really?”

“YES!” barked Vyvyan gleefully, hopping off the banister where he had been waiting and making his way over to Rick, who was suspended from the ceiling. Casually, he smacked him with the wooden cricket bat he had slung over his shoulder, causing the net to swing into the wall and indeed right through it. The neighbours peered through the gap disapprovingly, sat on their sofa with their cups of tea paused on the way up to their mouths.

“SORRY!” Vyvyan yelled. He turned to Rick. “Rick, apologise to the neighbours for disturbing them right in the middle of Coronation Street”.

“APOLOGISE? WHAT FOR? YOU’RE THE COMPLETE BASTARD THAT SMASHED THE WALL DOWN!!” 

“NO, Rick,” grinned Vyvyan. “It was YOU that smashed the wall down, actually.”

“Because YOU pushed me through it!”

“Technically, it was the bat that pushed you through it. Maybe the bat should say sorry too.”

“Don’t be RIDICULOUS Vyvyan, this is all YOUR fault, as always. I don’t know why I even bother to speak to you, you stupid git -”

As Rick continued to berate Vyvyan, neither of them noticed the cricket bat turn and look through the hole in the wall at the neighbours, who were now slamming their heads against what was left of the wall out of sheer frustration at the sound of the two arguing. 

“Sorry, mate.” offered the cricket bat.

“No worries,” panted the older male neighbour, as he wiped blood from his head wound. “Not your fault.” He headbutted the wall once more.

“I do what I can,” said the cricket bat, as Vyvyan flung it aside. It hit the wall with a loud bang that masked its cry of pain.

“Listen, you complete girl,” snarled Vyvyan. “Maybe you shouldn’t have come back in the house if you didn’t want to get stuck in that net. It’s just common sense.”

Rick snorted. “Mike, have you heard this nonsense? Vyvyan’s trying to tell me I shouldn’t come into my own house!”

Mike didn’t look up from the newspaper he was flipping through at the table. “Well Rick, the boy’s got a point. If you had simply gone somewhere else you would never have noticed the casino I’ve converted your room into. Needs must, you understand?”

“WHAT?” Rick shrieked. “Vyvyan, let me down this INSTANT!”

Vyvyan looked to Mike for confirmation, who nodded. He pulled a knife from his pocket and slashed the net open, sending Rick hurling to the floor. As he began to get up from the ground Vyvyan took great pleasure in kicking him down once more. Rick caught his foot as he did so and pulled him to the floor with him, climbing on top of him and attempting to attack him, screaming all the while. Vyvyan rolled them over until Rick was pinned underneath him, at which point he grabbed Rick’s nipples through his thin grey shirt and twisted. Rick wailed and kneed Vyvyan in the crotch. Swearing, Vyvyan rolled off him and curled up in a ball on the floor. Rick scrambled to his feet and kicked him hard in the back.

“HA HA HA, Vyvyan, see how you like it? I hope it blimmin’ well hurt! I HATE YOU!” With this he ran up to hide in his bedroom, unfortunately forgetting it was currently off limits.

“GET BACK HERE YOU GIRLY PRICK!” Vyvyan bellowed. With great effort he stood up and chased after Rick up the stairs.

Mike sighed and rolled his eyes. “Young love.” he muttered.

Vyvyan soon caught up to Rick at the first floor landing and immediately decked him. As he crashed to the floor, one of the notebooks fell from his pocket and skidded to a halt at Vyvyan’s feet.

“What’s this, poof?”

“Nothing! Actually, it’s MINE is what it is! Hand it over!”

Vyvyan pretended to think. “No, I don’t think I will. Thanks for the offer.” And with that, he waltzed off to his own room, whistling a jaunty tune. He slammed the bedroom door behind him so hard that the entire house shook and plaster fell from the ceiling directly into Rick’s hair, who was still slumped on the floor.

He groaned. At least he still had one of the notebooks.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed! There are precious little works for this fandom so I thought I'd attempt to contribute to the archives. I'm hardly an expert writer but I'm doing my best.


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